It's Official: WWE Doesn't Know What "Unification" Means

WrestleMania 38 main event billed one way, but might not produce expected result.

by Scott Carlson
Brock Lesnar Roman Reigns WWE WrestleMania 38
WWE

Roman Reigns versus Brock Lesnar is being hyped as many things in the lead-up to WrestleMania 38, but one of the biggest selling points is that both men's world titles will be up for grabs at the April 3 match.

In the last few days, the billing has changed to call this a "championship unification" match, which would heavily imply that the WWE Championship and WWE Universal Championship will be merged into one world title coming out of Mania.

However, it appears that WWE might have other plans than what many assume. Dave Meltzer said on Wrestling Observer Radio that WWE doesn't believe it's feasible to have one world champion because of the two different networks (NBCUniversal, which owns USA and Peacock and FOX):-

“The deal here is that it is a unification match and from what I am told, it’s the same idea as the last time they unified the titles. Remember like 20 years ago, 18 years ago when they did, and then like a week later they just handed a belt to Triple H. Hopefully, they don’t do that this year… I was told it’s not feasible in the modern environment to not have each brand, given the two networks, have a champion. This will be a unification match and they will not forget about it but there will be two champions.”

If accurate, this would mean that either Reigns or Lesnar will walk out with one world title, but they'd need to find a way to establish a new world title. When they last had a title-for-title match at WrestleMania 35, Becky Lynch walked out as the Raw and SmackDown Women's Champion, holding two titles, which she defended separately (and promptly lost the blue band title a month later). But that was not billed as a "unification" match.

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(h/t to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription)

Contributor
Contributor

Scott is a former journalist and longtime wrestling fan who was smart enough to abandon WCW during the Monday Night Wars the same time as the Radicalz. He fondly remembers watching WrestleMania III, IV, V and VI and Saturday Night's Main Event, came back to wrestling during the Attitude Era, and has been a consumer of sports entertainment since then. He's written for WhatCulture for more than a decade, establishing the Ups and Downs articles for WWE Raw and WWE PPVs/PLEs and composing pieces on a variety of topics.